5 city doctors, medical aspirants write to PM over NEET paper row

Kolkata: Five city doctors and some medical aspirants who appeared for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) this year with Bengali as their medium of examination, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to take steps in connection with the NEET question paper fiasco.

The doctors and medical aspirants drew Prime Minister's attention to the Bengali version of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) question paper that has created a furor across the state. In the letter, the doctors have pointed out how Bengali medium candidates were deprived due to innumerable errors in the question. It was stated that there were altogether 180 errors in the Bengali version of the NEET 2018 question paper, while the total number of questions in the exam remained at 180.

The doctors who have written the letter to the Prime Minister are Dr A K Maity, Dr Shankhadip Mula, Dr Imtiaz Ali, Dr Priyanka Maity and Dr Jahangir Alam. Others include Sushanta Pramanik, Aparajita Samanta, Bengali medium students of NEET 2018 and Susovan Ghosh, who appeared for the examination in English.

Ashok Adhikary, a guardian and Abhijit Sardar a teacher also joined hands with the doctors and the student in writing the letter. Dr A K Maity raised questions on why CBSE, assigned to conduct the examination, did not take precautionary measures especially after the previous year's incident when standard of questions in Bengali version was much difficult than that of English and Hindi.

"There should be no discrimination on the grounds of language in any examination and CBSE has no right to put the Bengali medium students in jeopardy," Dr Maity said.

The doctors also urged the PM to give proper instruction to CBSE/NEET(UG) authority to give 360 grace marks to Bengali version students for 90 wrong or ambiguous or incomplete questions, or to give proper instruction so that CBSE authority can arrange a re-examination of NEET (UG) 2018.